2) Farms. They should provide a small morale bonus. Better food makes happier people. Also means people will want to build farms. They need to do something to get people to research advancing farming tech- right now that's a tech that I never research.

In the alternate reality mod (wich is one of the best mods in the library) one of the farming tech give a farm that gives food and morale boost.

Mass Drivers are the best. They weigh less than missiles and cost less than lasers AND missiles. Plus, the AI almost never seems to build countermeasures/armor against Mass Drivers, while countermearsures for missiles are easy to research and don't weigh a lot.

Mass Drivers are great. Use Them.

The top thing I'd like to see is a queue for each planet's ship construction screen. I can't think of any half-decent excuse for it not already being in the game.

>>>Also, I don't see a way of fixing the Galactic Guide Book, I think it should be scrapped. Even if the GGB were available at the Stellar Cartography tech, all the anomalies are gone usually before the colonisation rush is over. No one would bother wasting a planet tile on something they can't use, and can't remove.<<<<

I agree with this sentiment... the guide book would come way too late no matter what. I find the anomoloies are gone before anything of substance can be built, and aside from saying "I built it", it serves no purpose at all. I liken it to the satellites tech in civ4, which comes almost at the end of the game with much fanfare and whose description brags " allows you to see the whole world (map) "... by this time I own most of it, I know what it looks like, thanks a heap. ?

The only way to make the GGB buildable at all would be to eliminate the "flagship", which in my mind is silly anyways. It has technologies I haven't researched yet. It's an anomoly all by itself. Where'd I get it? Was it a gift from the Vulcans??? It's wayyyy too fast. It can cover a huge distance way too quickly, and everybody gets one. It makes the first turns of the game a race to see who can click "auto survey" the fastest. Anomoly hunting is like the rotisserie oven by ronco... just set it, and forget it !

It would make a huge difference if the ship could barely get out of my solar system until i had researched drives, hulls and support. If I have to research the appropriate techs at the start of the game to get to where I can even build a ship capable of finding an anomoly, I then would have to choose between grabbing anomolies, planets or resources... Now the GGB becomes huge. The difference between having to purposely build Survey ships vs. Scout ships that can survey too would really open up some colony possibilities. Plus, because all the ships being built at that time are slow, limited in the distance they can travel etc. All of the races would get a few anomolies before they even met another race. Kinda like it would happen in the real world.

Now... if I can just get that Nuetral zone/get the heck outa my territory thingy....

add an ability for survey modules to collect scraps from destroyed ships

Sounds great, but complicated to implement..

Someone suggested in another thread that new anomalies could pop up during the game, that would make a GGB more useful.

Also, maybe, more powerful anomalies would be a good idea to make them more interesting. One of the mods has got this feature incorporated.

id like to see tax income proportinal to tax payers, not to its square root
it just makes high pop totally useless

Mass Drivers are great. Use Them.

Exactly. (Unless you're going to go evil, then psy-beams = teh win!)

3) Mass Drivers- They need to be better- right now the AIs never use them. Why use them when you can use missiles instead- which give you a lot more firepower earlygame?

Actually, I think I have yet to see a game where at least one race didn't go for mass drivers. For whatever reason, I see mass drivers used about twice as often as missiles, and missiles twice as often as beams.

Man why does everyone mistake missles to be so good early ? Ya, you get 2 power, but they're more than 2x bigger...

For me I like either lasers or mass drivers unless I'm the Yor or the Bugs to start out with. (Get decent miniturazation and can start with missles)

Then later in the game I ussually go down the missle path. Missles I think in the end are best simply because the AI doesn't utilize defense correctly. As pointed out, they're easy to defend against. (but the AI doesn't, hence why they're so good late in the game....)

Back to the OP,
1) Planetary defenses should be stronger, and do more stuff. (like give planet sensor bonus, or do the orbital fleet manager function)
2) GGB should be scraped.
3) Farms are ok, but the tax and morale equations are a bit extreme and force you into just a few choices of how to develop your planets. Nixing the square root would be a good start to fix this.

add an ability for survey modules to collect scraps from destroyed ships Sounds great, but complicated to implement.. Someone suggested in another thread that new anomalies could pop up during the game, that would make a GGB more useful.

i don't see why this is difficult to implement at all. Instead of the destroyed ships vanishing in a pixel cluster. A 'junked fleet' could be sitting there waiting to be scavenged. code it in as an anomoly, the old survey ship picks it up and cash is in the hand. don't you love recycling?

This would mean in the late part of the early game the survey ship is no longer obsolete and remains a valuable part of the game as a salvage vessel. Its a great idea.

I prefer lasers. They are the smallest weapons and shields are the largest defense systems.